JP Jones 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: EU Study Confirms: Hollywood's Site Blocking Campaign Is A Total Failure

    JP Jones ( profile ), 15 May, 2015 @ 10:33am

    Re:

    "Hi, I'm offering no meaningful contribution to the conversation, and telling everyone I'm an idiot for posting a response to something I consider click bait. Troll on, Anonymous Coward!"

    FTFY. Now shoo.

  • On the post: No, Just Because Seymour Hersh Had The Same Story As You, It's Not 'Plagiarism'

    JP Jones ( profile ), 15 May, 2015 @ 02:55pm

    If it's fiction--as some have implied, it's plagiarism.

    Um, is she basically saying that her original story was fiction? Because that's how I'm reading this.

    Well played?

  • On the post: EU Study Confirms: Hollywood's Site Blocking Campaign Is A Total Failure

    JP Jones ( profile ), 15 May, 2015 @ 11:12am

    Second, we find limited substitution into consumption of licensed offline video content...

    There's licensed offline video content? Where?

    Our results show that consumers do not increase their visits to websites of movie theaters or to DVD-related Amazon webpages.

    Oh, you mean there's no substitution for crappy offline video content. When somewhere starts selling DRM free video files then they can say they're an actual alternative to piracy. Until that point what they're selling is always inferior to the option piracy offers regardless of price.

    Streaming is OK, assuming you have a good, stable internet connection, are OK with paying multiple subscriptions to get a portion of available content and/or willing to deal with annoying ads, and don't have an issue frequently losing access to content, well, it exists. But it's not a replacement for a file that you can convert and transfer to any of your devices.

    DVDs are worthless; why would I use an easily breakable, un-reusable, 4gb data storage for a single film that requires its own peripheral to use that isn't used for anything else? When I could use a cheap 128 gb flash drive that can hold around 85 or so high quality movies, easily transfer them to other storage devices, and plugs into any USB port, for $30-$40? None of my computers even have DVD drives anymore; if I absolutely want to watch a DVD I switch over to my old Xbox 360 that I've had for ages.

    And movie theaters? I have a kid, which pretty much makes them useless. Not only are they ridiculously expensive (especially if you have to buy a babysitter too) but you have to go out and sit in a mildly uncomfortable seat with inability to pause, adjust the volume, rewind if you missed something, etc. For people with a moderately good home theater system and children a movie theater is strictly inferior in cost and experience to watching a movie at home.

    Ten to twenty years ago dealing with these options was the only choice. Home theater systems were rare, internet bandwidth was minimal, and physical distribution was still the most convenient for people. That world no longer exists, and I find it insulting that companies would expect us to just accept backwards technology because it's convenient for them. The fact is there is a demand for DRM free, offline digital video, which virtually no one is selling.

    I will end quoting Firefly, the perfect example of a show so excellent that only the gross negligence and broken system of our network television could possibly have destroyed it before it finished its first season. Not the original show, but the movie that was funded purely from DVD sales and fan support, even when the studios had abandoned it.

    "You can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere."

  • On the post: Flight Attendants Lost Their Tantrum Suit To Keep Bitching About Our Electronic Devices On Flights

    JP Jones ( profile ), 13 May, 2015 @ 02:03pm

    Re: Re:

    This. That's why the restriction was made by the FCC, not the FAA. It basically relates to spectrum use when you have cell phones moving rapidly between cell towers.

    Honestly, at this point, we restrict electronic devices for the same reason you wear those ridiculous lead bibs when getting an x-ray at the dentist. Modern dental x-rays produce less radiation than walking around outside for a day or a few hours flying on an airplane; the "protection" is entirely for show. Why? People would get nervous if you suddenly didn't need it anymore, and rather than explain it over and over, they hand you the stupid bib.

    If we think about it logically, if the electromagnetic field of a bunch of handheld electronic devices is such an issue, why are airlines replacing flight manuals with iPads? After all, those are right next to all your instruments, and presumably would be able to be referenced during flight.

    Never mind. If I bothered to try and keep track of every stupid thing we do because someone thought it was a good idea, regardless of a complete lack of evidence, I'd never think about anything else.

  • On the post: Stanford Prison Experiment Psychologist: You're Never Going To Get Laid, You Game-Playing, Porn-Watching Fat-Asses

    JP Jones ( profile ), 12 May, 2015 @ 02:08pm

    Re:

    You realize men play Candy Crush and Farmville also, right?

    Women play video games. This is a fact, confirmed by multiple studies, not to mention personal experience and common sense. The majority of games aren't marketed towards women, but that doesn't change the appeal. Whether being introduced by a significant other, a friend who plays, or just from interest, many, many women play video games. Just because they don't announce "I'm a woman!" every time they play a game online doesn't mean they aren't there (and there's moderately strong social pressure to avoid declaring themselves by their gender in video games).

    You might want to do some "research" before making assumptions based on, well, whatever you were basing it on (your buddies, maybe?). Most women I know play video games, including games like DOTA 2 and Call of Duty (both of which I don't play because I think they suck, but to each their own).

    Sorry to intrude on your non-existent boy's club fantasy land.

  • On the post: Latest Explanation For James Clapper Lying About 'Essential' NSA Spy Program: 'He Forgot About It'

    JP Jones ( profile ), 11 May, 2015 @ 12:53pm

    Re:

    Preserving classified information is a lower priority than truthfully answering a question under oath. Keep in mind that Wyden is on the Select Committee on Intelligence, a senate committee specifically charged with overseeing the intelligence organizations. There's a reason Clapper called Wyden "Sir;" it's because Wyden outranks Clapper. Clapper would not have been "cutting a new one" to anyone; if anything it would have been the opposite.

    If you had experience with classified information you would know this. You would also know that senators are protected from revealing classified information during debates on the Senate floor. You would also know that information that protects illegal or embarrassing activity cannot be classified by executive order.

    I realize that individuals that work with classified information are trained to protect classified data above all else. It's their job to do so, and in intelligence circles, classified information is held to an almost sacred level, regardless of what the actual information is. To an analyst, the sentence "(TS//SCI//NOFORN) The sky is blue." is a sentence worth killing or dying to protect. For the guys doing the day-to-day intel work, this is the reality, and it's a good thing; we don't need people with a little bit of information making decisions that could affect national security.

    Wyden and Clapper are not those people. They're the ones that are charged with deciding whether or not intelligence operations are in the best interest of the public. Wyden believed the 215 program was not; Clapper presumably believe it was. As a senator representing the American people, and as a member of the senate committee in charge of overseeing the intelligence community, it is absolutely Wyden's place to question whether or not a specific program should be classified, and he did in a way that gave Clapper an out, but also allowed for the opportunity to establish a public debate.

    Instead Clapper chose to lie under an oath to tell the truth. Considering that he was "protecting" classified information under another oath, I find his willingness to disregard one while having the option to avoid doing so extremely concerning.

  • On the post: Latest Explanation For James Clapper Lying About 'Essential' NSA Spy Program: 'He Forgot About It'

    JP Jones ( profile ), 11 May, 2015 @ 12:19pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    In fact, there's an executive order that literally states you cannot classify information in order to:

    (1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
    (2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;
    (3) restrain competition...
    I think this is one of the reasons many people are extremely interested in whether or not this program was legal or not. If found illegal, it means the classification was illegal as well, unless they can use some BS retract-o-logic to state they didn't know it was illegal at the time so it could be classified.

    I really wish I could use that excuse; "Sorry, officer, I didn't know the speed limit, I was driving by so fast I must have missed it. Since I didn't know, it's not illegal, right?"

  • On the post: UK Green Party Speculates On Idea To Shorten Copyright To 14 Years… Leading To Mass Freakout

    JP Jones ( profile ), 08 May, 2015 @ 07:15pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.

    The popular arts had not yet developed during the writing of the Constitution.

    OK, really? You mean the Constitution written right during the end of the Renaissance period? I'd recommend against using history as a basis for your argument when you clearly don't understand it at all.

    Most people don’t nor does a single creative professional I’ve ever met.

    And this (among other statements) is the core of your issue. Not the anecdotal evidence used to strengthen your point (it doesn't). The "creative professional." You use it again when you say "The public benefits from artists being able to sustain their careers."

    This comes from the false belief that three things are true...there are "professional artists" and "consumers" and that the two are never the same, that money is the primary motivation for artists to create, and that those artists must make their living from royalties on previously produced content.

    The fact is few people are able to make art a career, and even fewer on their own. Like any business, you need a market and demand for your goods; the demand is not automatic, and a business is not guaranteed to succeed.

    Likewise, never in human history has monetary gain been the primary motivation to create art. For those few that are able to produce enough quality art that has a high enough demand they can make a living off it but the majority of "artists" make content because they enjoy it. I've written books, made videos, wrote poetry, made (bad) music...and I've never made a dime. And I never needed that incentive to make it. Maybe I'd be able to make more stuff if that's all I needed to do, but really there's no guarantee that's the case.

    Lastly, if you believe that publishers are giving a fair deal to content creators, you're either incredibly ignorant or delusional. The very services you claim are harming artists are making them more money with royalties than their publishers ever did. Even Megaupload, the boogie man of the anti-piracy crusade, helped artists. I find it very interesting that the last Megaupload commercial before its shutdown was a group of actual, well known musicians, including Kanye West, Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Will.I.Am, Alicia Keys, Lil Jon, Chris Brown, Jamie Foxx and more [1] thanking the service for the money it was bringing them...and this was because Megaupload's paid content was actually making more money for them than their record labels.

    Again, I ask, why are you entitled to get paid for something your created previously for the rest of your life? No other industry gets the same benefit, unless you count banking investments, but even that is not a guaranteed return (as we all discovered circa 2008). And why are royalties on previous works your sole source of income?

    No wonder so many "artists" are poor. If they're hoping the scraps fed to them by publishers will sustain their income I can't imagine any other outcome. Go read some books on economics, business, and entrepreneurship and stop playing the victim.

  • On the post: Law Enforcement's Cluelessness On Display In Congressional Hearing On Undermining Encryption

    JP Jones ( profile ), 08 May, 2015 @ 06:29pm

    Re: Re:

    You had me, and then you lost me. You forget that all drug dealing is violent crime. It's just a subtler, more insidious form of violence than physical force.

    Uh, no. This logic makes absolutely no sense in the context of what I wrote. "Drug crimes" could be anything from cartel smuggling to getting caught with a couple grams of marijuana.

    Likewise, if you're going to complain about life-destroying addictions, I can't take you seriously if you don't explain why all individuals selling tobacco and alcohol products are not in prison. Heck, if you're talking about addiction, sugar and caffeine are addictive substances that have huge markets.

    You're making some massive assumptions with "drug crimes" and I'm not sure how selling addictive substances can ever be equated with murder, even assuming the majority of people in that 48.7% were dealers (much more likely for most to be users).

    Not that any of that really relates to my argument. The point is that we have a third more individuals locked up in prison than a country that outnumbers us by a billion people and is under the control of an authoritarian government known for human rights abuses.

    If that doesn't terrify you, it really, really should.

  • On the post: Verizon Picks The Worst Possible Person To Try To Bullshit Into Unnecessary Upgrade

    JP Jones ( profile ), 08 May, 2015 @ 06:09pm

    Re: Re: It's beyond puffery; it's consumer fraud.

    It's sort of like buying a pair of roller skates that advertise speeds of up to 120 MPH.

    When rider falls off a cliff.

  • On the post: Verizon Picks The Worst Possible Person To Try To Bullshit Into Unnecessary Upgrade

    JP Jones ( profile ), 08 May, 2015 @ 06:03pm

    Re: Re: If Verizon supplied electricity...

    Totally possible, if your cat simultaneously hit the fast forward button.

  • On the post: Anti-Piracy Activist Issues Takedown To Chilling Effects To Take Down Her Takedown Notice To Google

    JP Jones ( profile ), 08 May, 2015 @ 05:48pm

    Re: Re:

    They don't need 512 protection. They aren't hosting any illegal content. At all. They are reporting on sites that were reported. If they aren't hosting any illegal content they don't need a designated agent.

  • On the post: Encryption: What The FBI Wants It Can Only Have By Destroying Computing And Censoring The Internet

    JP Jones ( profile ), 08 May, 2015 @ 03:51pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: In addition

    Second, even with the big name agencies that have crypto-busting supercomputers, they don't have enough computing power to decrypt everything that they want to. It takes a large effort, so they have to be very, very interested in you specifically to do it. This is unworkable if what you want to do is have a widespread surveillance capability.
    This needs to be repeated more often. Intelligence agencies aren't afraid of encryption per se. They're afraid of losing access to massive amounts of private plaintext data for their "find an imaginary terrorist" algorithms.

    Also, it can help prevent your friendly neighborhood police from sending your personal photos to other officers. After all, encryption can only lead to abuse, not prevent it, right?

  • On the post: That 20 Mbps Broadband Line We Promised? It's Actually 300 Kbps. Enjoy!

    JP Jones ( profile ), 08 May, 2015 @ 03:42pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Just a thought

    Go talk to your psychologist. You need your meds dialed up.

    Is there a medication I can take to understand how my clearly sarcastic post became a discussion on ADHD treatment?

    Because I need some of that.

  • On the post: Encryption: What The FBI Wants It Can Only Have By Destroying Computing And Censoring The Internet

    JP Jones ( profile ), 08 May, 2015 @ 12:46pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: In addition

    I meant in practicality. One time pad encryption is only as secure as the measures used to protect the key...which are not, as a general rule, unbreakable. You can't memorize the key unless you're using a ridiculously short message to encrypt (which then becomes mathematically easier to plain guess anyway) and the key needs to be truly random.

    It's sort of like having an "uncrackable" lock. Maybe nobody can crack the lock, but if they blow a hole in the safe, the lock was meaningless. That's what I meant by "no encryption is unbreakable"; it's not the encryption that's the problem, it's that the keys to the encryption, whether passwords or even physical keys, are always less secure than the resulting encrypted data. Ultimately, if someone is determined to get into your encryption, they're going to find a way to do it, and it's probably going to be by targeting a vulnerability other than the encryption algorithm itself.

    So yes, if you have some super-secret data that's relatively short, made of 100% random characters, and you can successfully protect the key from anything and then completely destroy it after use, then you have unbreakable encryption.

    But after all that you might as well just keep the original information in your head and tell someone in a soundproof faraday cage =).

  • On the post: Encryption: What The FBI Wants It Can Only Have By Destroying Computing And Censoring The Internet

    JP Jones ( profile ), 06 May, 2015 @ 07:58pm

    Re: Re: Re: In addition

    No encryption is unbreakable. Given enough resources, any hash will eventually be cracked, and often much faster than you would think.

    That being said, breaking encryption does require some targeting, and is not instantaneous. While it's reasonably safe to assume that if the government really wants into someone's computer, they're going to get in, common encryption means they won't have the general data available to identify that guy in the first place. Many of these systems are likely using mass data analysis, and you can't analyze data on a massive scale if you have to crack it all first.

    That's what they really want. They want to use the NSA version of Google Adwords to find the bad guys with an algorithm. That style of thing doesn't work with mass encryption because by the time you break all the locks the data is meaningless.

    Considering I don't want them running my email through their terrorist filter in the first place I don't see this as much of a loss. But that's exactly what they want to do, and why they keep saying "we're not really reading your stuff." Yeah, neither is Google, but I still get targeted ads. The ads I don't mind so much, although Adwords does not always present stuff I'm actually interested in. Being targeted as a terrorist because some computer system thinks I need to be watched, whether I hit their criteria or not?

    No thanks.

  • On the post: How To Use 'Intellectual Property' Properly

    JP Jones ( profile ), 04 May, 2015 @ 09:44pm

    Re:

    The fact that you can't see the difference is a big part of the problem, and it's a problem with your comprehension, not the subject matter itself. Intellectual property rights being separate from the tangible form of the idea is one of the fundamental issues behind the horrible abuse our IP system is going through. If you think these aren't a problem, here's a simple example of intellectual property's cost when abused.

    Never mind, not sure why I bother. In the words of Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

  • On the post: That 20 Mbps Broadband Line We Promised? It's Actually 300 Kbps. Enjoy!

    JP Jones ( profile ), 01 May, 2015 @ 11:49am

    Re: Re: Just a thought

    I'm no expert, but it's only pirates that want fast speeds. Clearly, if you go over the cap and want fast speeds, you must be downloading TV and movies illegally. There is no other possible use for such bandwidth.

    Now go back to watching us pay grown men millions of dollars to play children's games on TV. The internet is a fad anyway; once we get control it'll all be better.

    Trust us.

    Sincerely,
    Your friendly neighborhood "news" corporation

  • On the post: Who Pays When The DEA Destroys Your Vehicle And Kills Your Employee During A Botched Sting? Hint: Not The DEA

    JP Jones ( profile ), 01 May, 2015 @ 11:40am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

    The owner's private property was taken for public use, without just (or any) compensation. Obviously the lawyers will use some exception to the exception to the law on raising gophers to prove that this somehow doesn't directly violate the U.S. constitution, but hey, I'm just reading exactly what it says.

    1. In that the truck was the owner's private property.

    2. In that the owner's private property was taken for public use in law enforcement.

    3. In that no compensation was given.

    You can argue until you're blue in the face that it was the employee who used the vehicle improperly, that the ones causing damage were not government employees, and that the DEA didn't force anyone to do anything. This was a sting operation, and it wasn't planned by the dead employee. The DEA knowingly set it up and knew that the employee was using the truck.

    There can be no doubt that the government took an individual's private property for their use, and that they were expecting conflict involving the vehicle (otherwise what was the point of having all the armed officers around?). The reason this is news is because, once again, we have something that is legal but is also wrong.

    Maybe the reason we have over 2.4 million people in jail, almost half of which are there for stupid drug charges, is because our country has forgotten the difference between the something that is illegal and something that is unethical.

  • On the post: UK Green Party Speculates On Idea To Shorten Copyright To 14 Years… Leading To Mass Freakout

    JP Jones ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2015 @ 01:38pm

    Re: Re: How will we earn a living? - GET. A. JOB.

    copyright ownership should be for the life of the creator. not a day less, not a day more.

    Why? What reason to do you have for copyright to be the life of the creator? What about works with multiple creators or when corporations own the copyright? When does the copyright expire, when the first creator dies, or the last? Do corporations keep the copyright until they go bankrupt?

    None of what you wrote makes sense to me. Please explain.

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